Telemarketing has matured to a significant industry in which a large number of companies compete for business. Today's telemarketing is based on a strategy of attempting to call qualified prospects at times when they are most likely to be at home. Lists of qualified prospects are often compiled from indirect sources that may poorly reflect past behaviour or may not accurately reflect current buying interests. Besides, qualified prospects are often not at home or are not interested in a sales pitch at the particular time they are called.
Consequently, much inventive ingenuity has been invested in making telemarketing systems more efficient to ensure that a maximum number of calls are handled in any given time period, in order to increase the number of sales opportunities. Such innovations include a system and method for out-dialling telephone calls on a basis which takes into account the availability of agents who are assigned to process telephone calls placed, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,133 which issued to Perkins on Sep. 3, 1996. The patent describes a system in which telephone calls are placed ahead of the availability of agents so that the overall productivity of the agents is increased. The number of telephone calls that should be placed is determined in light of the actual measurements of system performance and in light of performance objectives. Determinations are dynamically refined based on measurements of actual agent and telephone call activity provided by the telephone system.
While such innovations ensure that agent time is efficiently used, they do nothing to address the problem of targeting an audience that is interested in the product or service being marketed and available to respond to a call.
In recent years, the World Wide Web (WWW) has provided a constant presence for business which may be visited by potential customers. While the importance of the WWW has been increasingly accepted and tens of thousands of companies now have a presence on it, there is currently no provision to permit those companies to participate in the process of closing a sale. In its current form, the WWW does not support spontaneous behaviour that characterizes impulse buying.
Although recent innovations have provided mechanisms to permit interested individuals to contact company representatives using call request buttons, such as described in applicants' copending patent application described above, such mechanisms are passive and may be ignored by potential customers who would otherwise respond to a more immediate and personal contact.
There therefore exists a need for a method of telemarketing which is responsive to the specific activity of potential customers in order to ensure that effective contact with interested parties having focused attention is achieved.